Join us today for an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with experienced large-scale Tor operators!
Whether you're a privacy advocate, a network enthusiast, a developer, or just curious – we want to hear from you :).
Post your questions on Mastodon by using #TorOps or on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/1la9zgw/tor_operators_ask_me_anything/.
#Tor #TorOps #Privacy #Anonymity #Censorship #InternetFreedom #AskMeAnything #TorRelays
@tor_ama #TorOps Related to the “motivation” part: What keeps you going after years of investments? E.g. the emails from users in censored countries thanking you, the relay operators community. And: How frequent do you get emails from users that report on how #Tor helps them fighting (internet) censorship?
And maybe one last question: Do you have funny/interesting anecdotes to share? A technical issue you couldn’t crack at first? Some OpsFail you still have to laugh at when thinking about it?
Good Question!
Unfortunately the only emails we receive are abuse or law enforcement. Which are the exact opposite of being thankful or kind.
What motivates us in particular is knowing that we're doing something good for our spare resources. "Be The Change You Want To See In Others" type of thing.
Bonus Q:
We did loop our L2 between NL<>BE<>SE by accident when we set up our anycast backbone for the relays and called it the Large Packet Collider with ~400Gbit/s
Great question indeed :).
We actually receive emails thanking us fairly regularly, and those are very much appreciated.
But in the end we don't need thanks to do what we do. We know that what we're doing helps a lot of people in situations where certain freedoms are not a given. And that is motivation enough to keep going :).
Bonus question:
I once screwed up the compilation of a critical part of our pretty extensive DNS infrastructure, effectively resulting in 22% of the Tor network's circuits not being able to resolve any domain on the clearnet/internet. I only found out the following morning.
Yeah, I'm not proud at that moment...
My takeaway:
Never make significant changes to your infrastructure closely before going to bed and always test thoroughly!
Nothing to hide
Tor Relay Operator AMA
Mynacol
r0cket